Faith in the Fight | CPAC Women Warrior Summit

I appreciate that they have water up here. This is my emotional support water bottle. Does everybody else have one of those? I feel like we all do. Well, I think we are here at the tail end, but I promise you, you are going to be inspired and moved by these women and their stories, their testimonies, what they do, why they do it, and I think we're gonna focus a lot on that today. I've got notes. I'm pulling them up here. All right. I know there are a lot of people of faith in this room who are anything like me. They may guide you every day, but there may have been years previous or now, where you don't feel confident every day to walk in it or to share it, and I think that does a great disservice for those around us, right? It is probably the most important thing that we can share with others. I think it guides us and leads us in our service in the things we do, the things we choose to do, the work we choose to do, and these women here are living examples of that, and so I'm so excited you have the opportunity to meet them today. We are gonna talk a little bit about faith and also religious freedom issues and why it is important to help protect people of faith around the globe and the moral leadership that these women are encouraging and guiding women to have in their lives. So we have Esther Toto. She is the co-founder of Africa New Day, and she's gonna talk to you a little bit about what that is and what she does there. Meredith Turbulent-Shaylor. Did we do that right? We got it? Okay, she is founder of Guiding God's Daughters, and we have Annie Day here who works at a maternity home, and we're gonna have her share a little bit of that story and the testimony from that. If we can, I would love to start with you, Ms. Esther. Please tell us a little bit about the mission behind Africa New Day, why you stepped into that work, and the impact you've seen it have, and maybe share some testimonies from that if you would. Sarah, 20 years ago, we were finishing our study with my husband in Southern California, and we received an email, like you and I receive tons of them, right, every day. But this one email changed my life and the course of my destiny, because this email was talking and depicting the situation going on in Eastern Congo that I didn't know. Women were, I mean, rape was taken as a weapon of war, and children, instead of going to school, they were enrolled in different rebel groups. And what I felt after reading this email was like the Lord was telling me, now that you know, what are you going to do? How much we do when we hear so many things that we've even heard here since this morning. So faith for my husband and I was to answer wherever you send us, we'll go, knowing that we were going in a war zone. So it's been 20 years that we've been there, and I've seen in my eyes things that I, even the most horror movie cannot show that. And so African New Day is about helping men, women, and children to discover, develop, and deploy the potential. We believe that every Congolese, because we work in Eastern Congo, every Congolese has the solution or a problem as a nation. So our country has been sick after, raped until now, until today, and thank God that the government of President Trump that is working a deal right now with our country to bring peace against minerals. So we are trying to change the mentality of our men particularly, and we're doing that by educating our men and doing discipleship because you cannot torture and rape women and children the way you do if you have lost your identity. And so one of the things that has really touched me is to realize that men, I don't know if here America is the same, but in Congo, men don't think that women were made in the image of God. It's only men and women were made for them because they were taken from whatever. And so all this education is helping men. We have 60 lessons like that. And we've seen men realizing what they do and confessing what they do and multiplying because what we do, we bring a group together of 12 men who have to multiply themselves. And since 2010 up to now we have over 60,000 men who have gone through this journey of transformation. But there's a silent war going on in Congo that we are not talking about because it doesn't have to do directly with the Middle East. It's the persecuted church. And in Congo, it's happening since 2018 when this group of rebels joined the force together with the Islamic, with the ISIS, with the ISIS. So they've been working together and persecuting Christians like you will never see. You can be stopped on the street. They ask you your name. If you have a Christian name, you are executed. And we have videos of that. And mostly what they do with Christians, they behead them. And you've heard what happened in this church last year and many other happening today. And I will never forget this woman, Deborah, who came out of her church and was taken by a group of these ISIS people. Partners. And they asked her if she wanted to deny her thing. And she said no. And she's still single. And they raped her and left her for dead. But she wasn't. And was taken in the clinic later on and a group of people find her. And there at the hospital, she explained what happened to her. And when the rebel heard that the word was spreading, they came and burned that hospital, that clinic. So Christianity, the persecution of Christianity in our country is taken, is taken the direction that, in fact, the Islamic want the region, the entire region to become Muslim. And they burning our church and they building the mosque. And we're seeing this all around Africa, specifically in northern Africa, the northern part of the continent and in West Africa, that there is a very radical Islamic force that intends to make this part of the world, this part of the continent, they're a new caliphate. So we're seeing this happen in Congo, in Nigeria, in a number of countries. And if you haven't heard about it, please reach out to either of us. We'd be happy to share with you. The persecution of the church in this part of Africa has been ongoing and very little has been talked about it, unfortunately. But women are often, they get the brunt of it, women and children in particular. I love to remind people that the greatest defender of women that this world has ever known was Jesus Christ. And so when you have the opportunity to teach these men what women were really created for, you are really sharing the gospel with them and helping them learn and get to know who Jesus really was and why he and his father made women what we exist for. And the work you're doing there is incredible. And I know we'll all be praying for you as you continue that. And the persecution of the church that we also remember to pray for those people who are persecuted, that they have the strength in those moments to not deny the Lord. I've had the opportunity to travel to Iraq and meet the Christians there who a genocide was committed against and to meet a Christian who in the face of death stood up and said, I will not renounce my faith. I'm not sure there is anything stronger that you could witness or experience. And as a believer, it really changes how you view everything, right? And it calls you to step into that faith. And that's really what this panel is here to talk about is how we have stepped into our faith and how it guides us to do what we do. So thank you for sharing that, Esther. Thank you. Meredith, if we can turn to you, you're the founder of Guiding God's Daughters. We'd love to have you share a little bit about why you created this, what it is, the impact it's had, and let's start there. That's a lot. So Guiding God's Daughters is really a ministry where we are building up women as warriors for Christ and we are reaching the next generation because I mentor women in college in their 20s and they don't have women showing up for them that are in our age group. And I see a lot of women in our age group that are afraid to show up, that think their story isn't necessary, or maybe they're stuck in a resentment from 30 years ago. And what I wanna do is help transform, build up women as the leaders of our generation. And I also build up the young women and I don't do it based on career. I worked at the White House. I got a great resume, but to me, it is about your identity in Christ and that is what they need to know. Where does my purpose come from? It doesn't come from something I created on Instagram. It comes from my creator. So that is what I'm all about, is just helping women know. I look at a woman, I see a woman hurting, and I see her heart. And that, because what do we know in the Bible? What did God say to Samuel? He sees his heart. And that's what I wanna help women see. God sees your heart and he knows you are someone, he says you are his daughter. So let's find that out. And why? I grew up in a Catholic school, went to Notre Dame twice. Very good girl. But I was also an addict. And my last time at the White House, Matt Schlapp was actually my boss and I was having panic attacks every single day and it was like the fourth year of the White House and my body just could not handle the politics. My body was just like, I feel like the Lord was just like, you gotta get out of here. I have something greater for you. And so I went back to school at Notre Dame and that is where I met Jesus. And I grew up Catholic, but I met Jesus and all the guilt, he took it all. And he was like, I'm here for you, I love you. And from that moment, he started guiding me. I went into recovery. I had 18 years two weeks ago and he just keeps using me. Thank you. It's all him. He just keeps using me more and more and the women that we get to impact, I mentor young women. I go on the college campuses and I'm like, hi, what's going on? How's life? No, really, how's life? But I go to women in my church and my community and the grocery store and I see they're hurting. And I build these relationships with women in restaurants. I see a woman, she's hurting. Turns out she just had three miscarriages in the last year. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna go pray for her and I'm gonna show up for her. Because women need prayer in the marketplace. They need people that see them because there's so many women that are not seen. So I, like, and I, my mother, I love my mother to death, but we had a very difficult relationship. I'll leave it at that. So I needed strong women. So I wanna be that woman that shows up. I am, I believe in the spiritual family. I believe that God puts women in your life, people in your life to show up. I mean, we are children of God and he puts people in our life that will point us to him and that's what I'm all about. If I can help women find out who they are in God and walk in it and take them under my wing, take them under God's ring, that's what I'm gonna do. Amazing, thank you. You have a book and a podcast as well? Yes, I have a podcast called Get Real with Meredith and that's really just what I do. I just get real, which is really a popular term now, which I'm like, why did I name my podcast that? But I also have a book coming out called Step Up, Woman of God, You're a Warrior and The Next Generation Needs You because we are all warriors and we can't just sit back. Young women need us and they need us to show up for them because every story I've heard up here, every woman, I'm like, that woman isn't just saying, yeah, I go to church. No, no, no, no, these women are bright and these young women who look at me like, we're the women, we want them to show up. We're the ones that need to show up. That is a perfect segue to Annie because you can thank my mom for this, but I joined the pro-life movement when I was nine. That was my first march and then it went on from there and I used to refer to myself as militantly pro-life. I still am, I just, the word militantly turns some people off, but it's true. But one of the criticisms that the pro-life movement has often received is that we care about women up until they have that baby, when they choose life, and then we seem to disappear, which for the record is not accurate at all. Never in my experience, I'm 43 since I was nine watching this, not accurate. However, that's the criticism we get. But Annie is here today to talk about how she walks out her faith showing up for these women when they find out that they're in a crisis pregnancy or an unplanned pregnancy, walks with them through that time and that opportunity in their lives, and then has the opportunity to be with them afterwards. So Annie, thank you. If you would share some about what you do at this home in North Dakota and how the Lord has called you into that, that'd be great. So I work at the St. John and Pietro Mola Maternity Home, which is located in North Dakota. And so, yeah, I love North Dakota. And we welcome women who are in crisis pregnancies or some have already given birth and they come and move in with us. All the services we provide are free of cost to them. So we welcome them into our home and we help them navigate motherhood, they're still pregnant, pregnancy, postpartum, everything. And so these women who come to us are struggling and they don't have any support. Most of them, their family isn't supportive or their family members are also struggling and they don't have the capacity to be there for them. So they move in and we're able to just provide care and love for them. Last week, we had a new resident and I was speaking with her and she wasn't Christian and she just kept marveling. She's like, you guys are just so kind. You're so kind. Because she showed up and we were so excited that she's having a baby. And I was able to tell her, we believe in Jesus Christ and we believe that we need to support and protect the most vulnerable. And so you come to us and we are here and we're excited for your baby. It doesn't matter the circumstances, conception, we are here to support you and to love you and that baby is a gift and a joy. And so every day I get to learn about Christ in a new way by being His hands and feet, being with those that He cares about so deeply and that no one else is there for. And it's just, it's beautiful and it's joyous and it's difficult, but that's what He wants to show us. I mean, you are like 30 years younger than the rest of us on this panel. So I'm assuming you're Gen Z. Okay, so can you tell me a little bit too about how doing this, serving this way, has, what it's taught you about your faith, what it's taught you about reaching women your age and what we might need to know about how best to do that. Yeah, so I think we were talking earlier about how this work has only deepened my faith. And I think that my advice to girls, to boys my age too, is to go out and serve others, to be with people who are from different circumstances than you. There's so many people who are out there hurting and it's so easy to just turn a blind eye. I mean, every week I'm talking to women who have been through experiences that I can't even fathom. It makes me sick when they tell me about what they've gone through and the circumstances around their entire lives. And so I think that I've just learned what it truly means to be a Christian, to reach out to others, to do what's hard. And I think it also has made me depend on my faith because there's so many days where I'm like, I don't know how to deal with this situation. There's a lot of heavy things, it's difficult. And the only thing I can do is turn to prayer and to pray for these women and to teach them about the faith. And that has just deepened my faith. And it also has shown me so much joy. I've never experienced joy like sitting around the table and seeing the baby last week and just blowing kisses for the first time. So that was like, all we did all dinner long was watch him blow kisses at us. But like the joy at seeing that, just yesterday I was talking to one of the residents and he's very young, she's pregnant at 15, came in and moved in with us. And her little boy, who's 14 months old now, was just being so cute. And I looked at her and I was like, can you imagine your life if he didn't have him? And she's like, it would be a lot worse without him. And like, she's so young, a lot of people would have been, would say that she threw away her life or that that should have never happened. And she's just so grateful. And because of this pregnancy, she came in and moved in with us to learn about Christ. She's trying her best every day to grow in faith. And so they just inspire me with what they've been through and the way that they are so resilient. Thank you for sharing that, Annie. I wanna be very vulnerable here. I've never said this out loud or publicly, but I found myself after having been in conservative politics and policy for like 20 years, unmarried at 40, pregnant. And I now realize that what the Lord did in that, right, through my poor choices and sin and whatever else you wanna call it, right, I have now the most obvious reason for why I live out my faith and why I want to be a part of this world and make it better for others. I was doing it before, but that child has changed everything in my life. And so I'm just so grateful for the work you do. And so many pro-lifers around the country do. We don't just care about them until they're born. I know our time is up, but I very quickly just wanna, because each and every one of you are encouraging women, and in your case, men and others, to fulfill and live to their God-given potential. How can we, if we are seeking the way to hear from the Lord or to know what we're being called into, how can we get closer to him so we know what that voice sounds like? And I preface that by saying, I think for me, it was my son. And then after that, now I know it's the word, and I try to get in it as often as I can. It's worship music, and now I know what the Holy Spirit sounds like. But for those of us maybe who don't know that, what would you encourage us to do? Yeah, I mean, you're talking about kind of the spiritual disciplines. And I was just talking to her back there, saying, you know, what helped me so much is my father passed away. He was an ambassador to Luxembourg, and he passed away quite a few years ago. And I, you know, that's when I, again, had a surrender of like, okay, Lord, you're it. You are my father, you're it. And I remember just when I was in the Gospels and I read that scripture, when Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit, he said, I'm gonna give you the comforter, your protector, your defender. And it was, I kept reading it, and I was like, whoa, this is huge. Because my dad was my, you know, I don't know, he was my inspiration. So that, yeah, so that helped me really build a relationship with the Holy Spirit and to know that I am anointed, I'm appointed, you know, I'm set apart because of the Holy Spirit leading my life. And where does that come from? From getting in the Word. I seek him every day, I love the Lord. Like, I wanna know what he's gotta say every day. And like, when Mercy texted me, it's like, hey, you need to come to this. You know, it was two weeks ago, and I'm like, oh, I live in Michigan, I'm out of politics. But I was like, all right, Lord, give me an answer. Oh, it was like less than five minutes. I'm like, okay, fine, I'm going, you know, because I represent him. So, and I think I only know that because I'm in the Word, and I'm involved in my church, but it is that kind of building that relationship with him. He is always the one I seek for any decision. I was raped at six years old, and it was the first time before many others' time. And what I learned is that God doesn't waste anything in our life, the good and the bad. And that's what keeps me going. I'm here, my father passed away three days ago. After here, I'm going to go and bury my father. But nothing will stop me from telling people how much, as Christian, we have to stand for what we believe in. I'm so grateful to God to have allowed my father before, one of the last time that I saw him, to tell me that he was proud of me, of what I was doing. And I was able to tell my father what happened to me. For the first time. And we are living on the last days. And it's time for us Christian to stand and not be ashamed of our faith. Amen. Because the others are not, and they're doing it, they're killing us because we are not taking seriously the faith and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. It's time, brothers and sisters, to stand and be proud of that Jesus that saved us at the grand price. I'm sorry, Annie, that's impossible to follow. So if you want to, please, final word if you will. I'll just say quickly, last week, one of our residents actually asked me this. She was like, Annie, do you ever hear God? He's new to the faith. And the things that I told her, first of all, I was like, we just need to keep talking to him. Keep telling him about everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, and just always be in conversation with him. And then I'd say, the other piece of advice I told her, though, was to sit in silence. I think a lot of times when we are, when we receive so much information, we're always trying to talk, be the ones talking, but sometimes we just need to sit with him. For me as a Catholic, my favorite place to do it is in adoration in front of Jesus in the Eucharist and just sitting with him and allowing him to speak because that's the only time we can do it. I told you all that these would be inspirational women, and I mean, they were. So God bless you all. Thank you so much.